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Summer Visit - 2025 - IMPULS

The summer visit to Caltech is 4 days long and is the only time during the year of work when all the participants on the team come together in person to work intensively on the data. Generally, each educator may bring up to two students to the summer visit that are paid for by NITARP, and they may raise funds to bring two more. The teams work at Caltech; the summer visit typically includes a half-day tour of JPL, which is a favorite site for group photos. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The IMPULS team came to visit in July 2025. The 4 core team educators attended, plus 6 students.

Quotes

  • The work we carried out during the visit can NOT be done online. Having each other right there on hand to talk through and experience the work together was invaluable. It was not enough time, frankly. [We] are much closer and more at ease collaborating than we were before the trip. We feel comfortable calling each other and talking through the results we are getting.
  • For me, “real astronomy” was rolling up my sleeves and wrestling with the data. Sitting with the team and Luisa as she walked through the light-curve pipelines, typing in commands, and troubleshooting in real time. That was when I felt like a genuine researcher. It was in the back-and-forth of asking “Why is this flux point off?” and watching her reproduce the exact steps on her screen. That hands-on, collaborative number crunching! The collective “aha!” when a curve suddenly made sense. That's real astronomy.
  • [Advice to others:] Be ready to work! I have truly enjoyed being a part of the NITARP experience. I have such a better understanding of not only how to access data, but how to interpret it.
  • [student: To be an astronomer,] I think it is important to have perseverance, confidence, and adaptability.
  • [Advice to others:] Partnering with your fellow teachers doubled our progress; don’t be shy about pairing up to debug code or interpret puzzling results. And you’ll get exponentially more out of the experience if you keep the conversation going once you’re back home.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2025 - IMPULS